


hold

by subtlewanda



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bucky Barnes Has Nightmares, Bucky Barnes Has PTSD, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Nightmares, Sharing Trauma, Swearing, and again, and so does Reader, bucky's pov but third person still, essentially i've been having nightmares and i wrote this to cope, related to PTSD, so does reader, thank you
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-17
Updated: 2020-12-17
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:55:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28131276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/subtlewanda/pseuds/subtlewanda
Summary: the wall you share with your neighbor is thin.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes & Reader, James "Bucky" Barnes/Reader
Comments: 2
Kudos: 62





	hold

**Author's Note:**

> posted this already to my tumblr. i’m not making any exploratory grounds within myself or this character with this fic. i’ve just been ~feeling it~ lately and needed to write it like this. honestly tho? can’t believe i was sad and wanted to be comforted by a man. thank god he’s fictional.
> 
> if you're interested in the social media series i'm working on or anything else i've written, check out my tumblr @subtlebucky
> 
> disclaimer: reader is meant to be gender neutral, let me know if that doesn't seem true at any point.

Bucky doesn’t mind that you wake him when you cry.

Honestly, he doesn’t. It may be a bit insensitive, but he’ll admit that part of him has been enjoying living next to you for that reason, something akin to relief washing through him at the sound of your soft cries just after one in the morning. They pull him from nightmares before they can grab too tightly onto him, refuse to let go. Before he slips back into a place where he has no control and all he feels are icicles prodding and digging violently into flesh that he isn’t even sure is his.

There are other perks, though. One of them being that the first time he had told you he had _issues_ , you had snorted, saying, “We all do, buddy. That’s called trauma. Usually starts at childhood and builds into a cancerous mass of broken relationships and mental health problems.” You’d given him a sarcastic smile that had shifted into a full-on grin at his surprised laughter.

He likes that memory. It’s one of the first times you smiled at him.

But he doesn’t mind when you wake him, and he doesn’t mind when you let him in.

Bucky’s developed some form of routine with you, when it comes to nightmares. He never goes straight to your front door—too personal, too _suffocating_ if you aren’t looking for the comfort he was offering. The two of you have a code. Simple, but it works.

He uses it tonight. Knocks twice on your thin shared wall, leans up against it, and waits.

He’s used to the waiting. He guesses he doesn’t mind that, either, or much else when it comes to you. You just don’t give him much to mind.

When he hears two knocks back, confirming his question of _you need me?_ , he’s putting on his slippers, but pacing himself. You yelled at him last time for being too eager to make you feel better.

He sees you’ve already cracked the door for him when he’s locking up his own apartment. He walks in to you heating up hot water in the microwave, rolling his eyes at you as he pulls out a chair. “I still don’t get why you won’t let me get you a kettle.” You ignore him, so he speaks up again as you slide a potholder as barrier between your hand and the overheated mug. “Seriously. You look ridiculous.”

“ _Seriously, you look ridiculous_ ,” you mock, not turning to him as you place your own mug in the microwave. “Our apartment building is not anywhere near soundproof. Which means the two neighbors I share a wall with—you and Peggy Carter, who scares the absolute _shit_ out of me— hear every toilet flush and every toe-stub.” You set the time for longer than it needs to be and get a little lost in the buzzing sound of radiation. “The chances of me catching the microwave before it goes off compared to a kettle I will most definitely walk away from when I get too bored are much better.”

“Should I bring up the electric kettle argument, then?”

“Well, there’s your problem,” you grin. “If you get me an electric kettle, I’ll just want all of the things that come with it. I’ll want filtered water, then, too, so I’ll want a Brita. But not the shitty Walmart brand— the real thing, with new filters and everything. Then, I’d want a fridge that gives me filtered water to begin with. Then, suddenly, you’re paying a chef on a monthly basis to cook me three meals a day plus snacks whenever I want.”

He sighs at your long-winded exaggeration. “It’s a fucking _kettle_ that won’t make _noise_.”

You shrug. “Privilege is a slippery slope. I don’t trust myself.”

“And if I just bought it for you anyway?”

“I’d kick your ass, return it, give you the money back, and buy _you_ something twice as much. Don’t even go there.”

Bucky raises a brow. “You don’t have more than pocket change to spare.”

“Exactly. You’d be the reason I’d lose this apartment, and that would suck for us both.” Your smile is private, but it’s for him to see. “So let me drink my shitty tap water tea made in my shitty microwave. Cool?”

_God_ , you’re stubborn. And for absolutely no reason. He can’t help it, though— his response is a smile of his own, earnest, and when you notice it, you turn away to watch the mug spin through the small window.

It’s silent as you stop the timer, open the microwave door before you slip on oven mitts to take out the mugs. He knows better than to break your concentration, so he doesn’t speak until you turn to him with a raised brow. “Just black tea is fine.”

You sigh. “I always hope you’ll change your answer,” you reach for your tea cart, grabbing his tea as well as your favorite mint tea, “And I’m always disappointed when you don’t.”

There aren’t many words exchanged between you for a period of time, Bucky asking for a dollop of honey and two sugars. You scrunch up your nose at the thought of its overt sweetness, but still say nothing.

It’s after the burn from the tea’s heat has almost started to fade from his tongue that he speaks up. “Do you want to talk about it?”

He knows there’s a chance you might say no. But there’s also always the chance that you say yes.

You’ve only actually talked about your nightmares with him four times. Each time, you’ve mentioned a _he_ , and that’s all the information Bucky gets about who ‘he’ is and how this person is connected to you. But you’re gracious with the details of your nightmares. In the ones you shared, you were running, and 'he’ was chasing you, shouting expletives and things you were always too overwhelmed to share with Bucky in the moment. Things he suspects started the nightmares in the first place. You would run, and run, and run. The man would never get close enough to touch you, but you’d once described him to Bucky as close enough to _almost_ feel his hot breath fanning over the back of your neck. _Like he’s trying to do it, to psych me out_ , you’d said, _and if I were any less determined—or frightened, maybe—he’d succeed._

Tonight, he gets a shrug from you in response. “Maybe.” _Iffy_ , he thinks, _but doable._ “You wanna talk about yours?”

He looks at you, then. Really, it’s more than looking, more like openly staring, taking someone in as much as you can. You let him. You know it helps him think, concentrating on something or someone to get out of his head a bit.

Bucky’s stare eventually shifts to the table. “I think so, yeah. Not too many details, but… I think so.”

You adjust yourself in your seat at his affirmation, cross your legs in a seat that is too comfortable to be at your shitty kitchen table (when you bought chairs for your living area, you’d accidentally doubled each purchase—a happy accident). You pull your mug into your lap, the steam fogging up the bottom half of your glasses. You nod, letting him know he can start when he’s ready.

“So. I still haven’t really figured out where I am.” He sighs, moves his flesh hand around the rim of the mug. You made fun of him for that, once— _You’re the only person I know that actually does that_ —and the memory makes his mouth twitch for a moment. He continues. “All I know is it’s fucking freezing. I’m still waking up in a cold sweat, but this one… it felt… I don’t know. They all feel different from each other, but this one felt like… Like when your foot falls asleep, you know? Pins and needles? It was like… if that was all over your body, everywhere, and it was ten times worse.” He breathes out. “I still can’t see anything, but I _feel_ someone to my left. Like they’re studying me, or something? Like… they’re giving me the pins and needles all over just to see what I’ll do.” A pause, and then, “What this will do.” Bucky knows you’re looking at him, so he knows you see his metal fingers flex.

You reach across the small table for said hand, and he doesn’t flinch away like he has before. He’s used to your touch—almost craves it there more than anywhere else. It makes him look up at you.

“What did this hand do today?”

Fuck.

He hates this exercise.

He’d mistakenly told you about it one night— his therapist had tried to introduce something, and he felt absurd when she did. But he told you about it because he thought you’d laugh along with him.

You didn’t. Instead, when he told you his therapist said he should go through a weekly, if not daily, list of things that his metal hand has done— _normal_ things, every day things that are neither good nor bad, but simply just are—you had nodded. You had nodded and said, “Yeah. Okay.”

And, he hates this exercise. He hates this because it helps. Reminds him he’s not there, not that person anymore, even if that person will always be part of him. Maybe he still doesn’t think he deserves the help.

He closes his eyes, focuses on the way you rub your thumb over his palm. “Uh…” It takes him a moment, but he gets a small list forming in his head. He clears his throat. “Brushed my teeth. Put cereal and milk in a bowl… Oh, I started that book you lent me. It… I turned the pages with that hand… I guess.”

You move from his palm to playing with his fingers, a simple gesture that always seems to make him feel safer. “How do you like it so far?”

Your stare is genuine, like you don’t care where the conversation goes. Like you only care that it continues, and that it is with him. It’s overwhelming. He looks back to the table again and nods. “It’s… good, yeah. I like it. Sometimes I get a little confused? And I have to reread the piece, but they’re really interesting. It’s… a perspective I haven’t thought about before. But it’s good.”

You smile, then. It’s small, and somehow blinding, even with Bucky not looking directly at it. “They say that’s what poetry’s all about, so it looks like you’re getting the hang of it.”

His gaze shifts back to you. You squeeze one last time, and his fingers go lax as you gently slip your hand out of his.

You both let the silence engulf you again, hold the two of you close in its comfort, before he speaks up again. “Do you want to?”

You know what he’s asking, and you breath out as you nod. “It’s only fair, right?” Your lip tilts up, but it isn’t really a smile. Bucky’s used to that with you. “It was the usual chase, but we were in this… Lake? More like a swamp, but it wasn’t really muddy… It sort of was, though. I don’t know.”

You do this, sometimes. Fragments of dreams pop through in weird ways, and it gets hard to explain. Bucky takes your left arm and lays it on the table, the underside face up so he can trace it up and down steadily.

You help him to focus, and he does the same. “Thank you.” It’s quiet, and you watch his finger moving as you speak. “They’ve been getting worse lately. This time, it isn’t really muddy, I guess. But it’s hard to move through like mud. Nothing is sticking to me, but there’s something holding me back from moving as quickly as I would if it was regular water? So… swamp water-ish, but it’s clear. I can see my legs when I look down, and I can see how slow they’re moving, and it only makes me more panicky.” You take a sharp breath in, and your lip starts to tremble.

You don’t cry in front of him often. They’ve been a bit more frequent than the times you’ve opened up, but, God, pieces of himself he didn’t even know existed break just a little when he sees tears start to well up in your eyes. “Hey,” he says, brings his metal hand up to your cheek, catching the first few tears that fall. “Hey, you’re okay. I’m right here with you. You’re okay.”

He breathes with you, makes sure you’ve calmed down enough to take another sip of your tea. Your voice is still shaky, but you continue. “He got to me this time.” You reach for his hand, and he lets you grip as hard as you need. “I couldn’t… I felt his breath, right on my neck, and he… he said he’d never let me go.” You look up at him, tears already staining your cheeks again. “He got to me, Bucky.”

Bucky’s already moving the moment you look up at him, forgetting his worries about personal space. You stretch to him as he rounds the table, and he crushes you in a hug. He’s still standing, your face pushing into his chest. He’s pressing you into him, too, keeping you close, whispering over and over, “I’m right here.”

He isn’t sure how long the two of you stay connected. He just knows he doesn’t want to let you go, not when he feels your cries in his chest, his lungs.

You pull away from him first, after some time. You laugh at yourself. He hates when you do that. “Pathetic, huh?” You wipe harshly at your face.

He grabs your wrists and pulls them down to your lap, shaking his head. “No. You’re not.”

For a moment, the two of you stare at each other. He sees the vulnerability on your face, and the fear that comes with it.

You break the eye contact, nodding your head toward your open bedroom door. “Come lay down with me?”

He’s in love with this part. Laying down with you, on your much better mattress, holding you to his chest. He could lay here with you for the rest of his life.

You let him slide into your bed, and you plop yourself right down onto him. Your cheeks are still wet, with your nose red from crying, and something inside Bucky heals while you smile at him. He tangles his right hand with your left.

It’s a few long moments later, him drawing random patterns on your back with his metal fingers, when you speak up. "Do you think we’re healthy for each other, Buck?” You sniffle. It makes him squeeze at his grip on you. “Do you think this is bad, leaning on each other like this? Counterproductive?”

His hand pauses. He tilts his head down to look at you. You’re already watching his face when he does. “Look at you, hotshot,” he smiles, but it’s tight-lipped. “Using the big words from therapy.” You roll your eyes and look back down at your connected hands resting on his thigh.

There’s another pause, and then, “My _therapist_ yells at me about you.” You trace circles over his chest with your free hand. “Says we need to either stop what we’re doing or get married just to make us make sense.” Bucky’s heart stutters, and he knows you feel it underneath your palm. You may even be able to hear it, if you were trying to.

You kiss at his heart through his shirt.

“Yeah,” he breathes. “Mine, too.”

Your head lays stagnant on his chest, left hand still connected with his right, his thumb stroking over the expanse of the knuckles he can reach. Your right hand snakes around and underneath him to rub at his back. You’ll wake to your own pins and needles, but it reminds you that your body is searching for circulation. That it’s alive and present and existing, even if it’s exhausted. “Do you think we make sense?”

His reaction is automatic as he shifts his head to press his lips to your forehead. “You’re the only thing that makes sense to me.”

You lift your own head as he lays his back down, but your faces are still close enough that he can feel the air leaving your nostrils. Your eyes shift to his, his lips, then his eyes again. Bucky holds his breath.

He feels you let out a deep breath, like you just remembered to breathe again, and then you place your head back on his chest.

The two of you fall asleep that way easily. Despite the tea. Despite the nightmares. Despite the feelings shared in things both said and unsaid.

There’s always another time.


End file.
